Days of Whine & Dozes

Carol and Judy came to visit the other day. We’ve been friends for close to forty years. This get-together was as wonderful as the countless others we’ve had. There were many laughs, as always, but it was apparent that our interests and topics of conversation had changed over the years. Perhaps part of what contributed to the shift was that I greeted them in a knee high cast, while sitting in a wheelchair. I’d torn my Achilles heel in two places and been instructed not to walk – at all – so rather than face the prospect of spending two months in bed, a wheelchair seemed like the best solution.

Our conversations have always been deep, intellectual, thought provoking, and covered a broad spectrum of topics. This day was no exception.

We began by discussing what kind of tasty obscenities they had brought for me to eat, and segued to how they could not believe that after eight weeks in a wheel chair, without fresh air, sunlight, or a visit to my hair dresser, I looked amazingly wonderful and had absolutely no gray roots. (You can understand why I’ve maintained a loving relationship with these loving prevaricators.)

When we started meeting years ago, relevant topics of conversation included:

• Does peeling, seeding, removing all that white stuff from an orange, then breaking it into segments before giving it to our teen age children fall into the category of spoiling them and could it retard their independence?
• When our children repeatedly oversleep, should we wake them and drive them to school, let them continue to sleep because they probably need it, allow them to be late and pay the consequences, or call them a taxi?
• When our husband stands on the stairs, points to a sock on one of the steps, and asks why it’s still there from that morning, do we owe him an apology and explanation, rush to pick it up, or shove him down the stairs so he can better reach it and pick it up himself?

This time amidst the diet salad and chocolate nut brownies, we discussed the thirty eight times we’d each been to Weight Watchers, the pros and cons of the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet and why hot fudge should count as a vegetable.

We then moved on to a full one hour discussion about the arthritis in my left thumb, how lucky I am that it isn’t my right thumb, and how Bextra, and Celebrex do nothing for me, but Vioxx, while eating a hole in my kidneys, and increasing my chance of having a heart attack, does diminish my thumb pain.

Carol had to periodically leave the room to put drops in her eyes. She had had cataract surgery a few days earlier, and carried a special kit filled with tiny bottles, and two legal sized sheets of white paper explaining how, when, where, how much and to what extent drops were to be placed in her eye.

“I have to keep my head back for one full minute after putting drops in,” she complained. “Do you have any idea how long one full minute is?”
Hesitating for a moment I suddenly knew the answer she was after. “Five years?”
“Yes,” she nodded, never missing a beat. “Five years.”

Judy reminded us that she had been walking around with a torn knee cartilage for years now, but it hadn’t stopped her from playing tennis, or doing aerobics because she keeps her knee bandaged. Still, fear of what could happen at any given moment hovers ominously over her head.